There are a number of reasons you might not know why everyone in creative writing circles is talking about NanoWrimo this week. Maybe, like me, you gave up caring about NanoWrimo during previous scandals. Perhaps you put off looking at anything about the challenge until at least October. Or perhaps you don’t know many writers. Both the Washington Post and the New York Times have weighed in on the current controversy, but maybe you’ve made the choice to ignore news outlets for your mental health, or only watch comedy pieces about former president and current felon Donald Trump’s inability to string coherent sentences together.
Speaking of an inability to string a sentence together… And speaking of NanoWrimo… Let’s add those two concepts together! The folks over at the NanoWrimo head office made an official statement last weekend that was interpreted as defending people who want to pretend they’re writing books but are actually just feeding a computer prompts, appearing to say that it is no longer necessary to actually bother with the annoyance of writing during National Novel WRITING Month as you can just have an AI do it for you and still claim credit! Yay!
From a more recent statement attempting to provide clarification, they’ve explained they were trying to shut down what they viewed as harassment of people who admitted to using AI in their forums. (Note: Toxicity in the NanoWrimo forums is nothing new, and attempts at doing something about it have a history of not going well.)
But it wasn’t just the appearance of condoning pretending to win by making an AI spit out nonsense for you that upset people. No, NanoWrimo appeared to accuse arguments against claiming credit for what the AI spat out as both ableist and classist. Here’s the quote for that:
We also want to be clear in our belief that the categorical condemnation of Artificial Intelligence has classist and ableist undertones, and that questions around the use of AI tie to questions around privilege.
Many people have written articulate and scathing condemnations of appropriating language used to address real and great injustices to try to shame people who think writers need to actually write their own books. In their new statement, NanoWrimo admits to poor wording.
We apologize that our original message was unclear and seemingly random. Our note on ableism and classism was rooted in the desire to point out that, for people in certain circumstances, some forms of AI can be life-changing. We certainly don’t believe those with concerns about AI to be classist or ableist. Not being more careful about our wording was a bad decision on our part.
I had to go to the Wayback Machine to see the original post, but here is their logic on those allegations. (Read the whole thing if you’d like.) Here’s a quick breakdown and some quick responses.
Classism. Not all writers have the financial ability to hire humans to help at certain phases of their writing. For some writers, the decision to use AI is a practical, not an ideological, one. The financial ability to engage a human for feedback and review assumes a level of privilege that not all community members possess.
This appears to me to condone the use of AI in editing. And, really, you’d have to explain to me what the difference between doing that and utilizing a word processor’s spell and grammar check is. I think MOST writers use at least spell check. I don’t feel it’s particularly controversial. Obviously, having a human who has studied grammar go through your manuscript is likely to be worthwhile for those who can pay one, but maybe computer tools are enough for a writer who can look at the feedback and know when it’s right, when it’s wrong, and when it’s somewhere in between. Regardless, while this is inarguably part of the publishing process, I don’t view it as part of writing itself.
Ableism. Not all brains have same abilities and not all writers function at the same level of education or proficiency in the language in which they are writing. Some brains and ability levels require outside help or accommodations to achieve certain goals. The notion that all writers “should“ be able to perform certain functions independently or is a position that we disagree with wholeheartedly. There is a wealth of reasons why individuals can’t “see” the issues in their writing without help.
The last line returns us to editing. The bit about writers being able to perform certain functions is vague, but where a lot of the pushback is stemming from. I don’t think it’s particularly ableist to maintain that a novelist needs to be able to tell a story in their own words. That’s what writing a novel is. Is it ableist to say a runner must be able to run to claim that title? Many people can’t run, and that’s okay. They should be allowed to do other things. Walk. Ride a bus. Use a wheelchair. Whatever gets them to where they want to go. But they probably wouldn’t call those things running or try to identify as a runner, and I think the running community would be justified in asking them not to.
Personally, my aphantasia does sometimes lead to muddling through descriptions as I can’t visualize what I’m describing. Most of the time, it’s actually not a problem. When I am stuck from this, I run image searches to find illustrations that are close to what I want and, viola, I can now see what I’m describing with only a few details off! At this point, I’ll acknowledge a lot of what I’m finding is AI generated. I feel it’s crucial to point out, though, that I will find a drawing someone did and describe it in my own words. I might at some point be willing to ask an AI for a picture of a specific thing I’m not finding a basis for. What I would never, ever do is tell an AI, “Write a paragraph describing an attractive Elven bookstore owner,” then cut-and-paste the results into my manuscript and pretend I’d written that because I thought up the idea that there’s a bookshop in my setting and someone attractive owns it.
General Access Issues. All of these considerations exist within a larger system in which writers don’t always have equal access to resources along the chain. For example, underrepresented minorities are less likely to be offered traditional publishing contracts, which places some, by default, into the indie author space, which inequitably creates upfront cost burdens that authors who do not suffer from systemic discrimination may have to incur.
Eh? Isn’t this the same argument as the first one, but with additional notes of racism?
Overall, I’m struck that NanoWrimo’s AI defenses revolved around publication, not writing. And while maybe that is most writers’ end goal, it’s well outside the challenge of writing a novel-length rough draft in a month. Yet, nothing they’ve said since has clarified that they didn’t mean you can claim credit for a computer’s output as though you’d written it and be declared a winner via that method, and that certainly feels like it’s because the people criticizing them over that stance aren’t interpreting what they really meant incorrectly.
As for me, I wasn’t intending on participating in NanoWrimo this year as I haven’t been part of it for many years. Later, I’ll get into my experiences when I did participate, what I do now, and what alternatives people may want to consider if they’re done with the organization but still need a group challenge for motivation.
